Added 1 new A* page:I've been doing this comic for what...two years now, in one form or another (it started off as an animated thingy, you know), and you'd think I'd have settled on a way of drawing SPACE, but no. I threatened with the last page that I was going to try a more traditional painted approach for stars and gasses next time, sort of forgetting that next time was the very next page! So after trying three other approaches first (the second one being a lasso + Noise filter one for which I even posted a quick test example on the forum; but I ran into difficulty when trying to push it to high contrast and detail, and then when I was at wit's end and just googled "photoshop starry sky" or something to see how *other* people do it, I found that, like, everyone uses the Noise filter for stars--so obviously I couldn't settle for that ;P), I finally settled for a somewhat paint-like method on the space background for this page (in GIMP, airbrush with some funky settings for the stars, and Ink Tool with various opacities for the dark clouds blocking them).
I think it worked...okay? I mean, I need some practice with it, but it at least seems to offer the flexibility, speed, and detail I want. So I think I'll probably have at least a few more cracks with it, although I think there's only hm one more space shot in the near-ish future--but there will be more further on down the road of this long episode.
Oh yeah, I also promised to present my most presentable storyboard for this episode so far--which isn't far at all. Haveta do better on those next week. Anyway here's the one, a layout for what will probably be page... Wait no that one's way too scribbley. Huh! Well, okay, so I don't have a presentable one yet. Dang. Hm. What to give you... Oh well here's today's Sketchy comic, which I draw more or less the same way as the storyboards (GIMP's Ink Tool):
The biggest difference with this new Intuos4 tablet over my old Intuos3 tablet, as far as drawing A* goes, is that the drawing surface has some bite to it--versus the slick surface of the Intuos3 and the ancient Calcomp Drawingslate I had before that--so it takes a bit more effort to move the stylus across the page, but the up side is that it's easier to stop and change drawing direction; so it sort of favors a more detailed, intricate drawing approach, which is somewhat in contrast to the spazzy, wrist-flicking, sliding-over-the-surface style I'd gradually developed for drawing on the computer. It's taking a bit of getting used to, and I kind of miss the effortless glide of the smooth old drawing surfaces, but it *does* help with detail work, and if you look over the past two and a half pages (not counting the title page for this episode, but counting the shading of the last page of the previous episode), I think you'll probably be able to spot a slight difference in that respect.
Gar, up too late again. :P See you next week!
|
